Last time i installed an SP2 Beta i could see it mentioned in the installer and virtually in every doc inside the installation package. Now i see nothing to indicate that and it is confusing. In any case it works great as is.

Last time i installed an SP2 Beta i could see it mentioned in the installer and virtually in every doc inside the installation package. Now i see nothing to indicate that and it is confusing. In any case it works great as is.

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Well like I said, when any service pack, or OS is in it's BETA stages Microsoft quite clearly documents which build number and stage of BETA it is in. Once it's released it just become Service Pack X or Windows X, so as not to confuse the public.

Imagine you knew nothing about PCs and were confronted with SP2 BETA, SP2 RC, SP2 RTM and SP2, which would you go for? lol

as to making it harder for people to pirate, it dosnt really do more then block the most common OLD crack, newer cracks have replaced them that ARE NOT BLOCKED.

as to the "based on server 2008 code" sp1 was as well, it was ment to bring vista to the same state(kernal version) as server 2008, ms is trying to get back into their old practice of having the same updates for the workstation/desktop os as the server veriant of the same os

We managed to get hold of a copy of Windows Vista SP2 RC (Release Candidate) from Microsoft and decided to put it through its paces against Vista SP1 to see if consumers can expect to see any performance improvements in the latest service pack for the struggling Vista operating system.

Release Candidate or RC simply means that it is a possible final version for Microsoft to release to the public sometime soon after. Many previews of the Vista SP2 BETA were published toward the end of last year, but this is build 6002.16659.090114-1728 – a newer release which is likely to yield some improvements.

Besides any possible performance improvements, service packs always include new OS features and usually a truck load of bug fixes and security updates.

Here is a summary of the new features that Microsoft will add to Vista SP2 from PC Adviser:

• Let you record data onto Blu-ray discs

• Add into your system Vista Feature Pack For Wireless, which provides support for the latest Bluetooth technology - Bluetooth v2.1 - as well as for the Windows Connect Now (WCN) Wi-Fi protocol

• Let your system support exFAT, which can handle larger files and can also use UTC timestamps so you can synchronize files across different time zones

• Boost your power management efficiency by as much as 10 percent

We installed fresh installs of both Vista SP1 and SP2 on our test bed, installed all available updates from Windows Update for both operating systems and got to work benchmarking over the past couple of days. Our SP2 Ultimate install took up a total of about 14GB of HDD space, while SP1 is slightly slimmer at around 13GB.

Let's get started now and see if it will be worth upgrading to Vista SP2.

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Final Thoughts

So, from our testing here today, what conclusion do we come out with at the end of the day?

Vista Service Pack 2 RC managed to steal some surprising gaming wins away from Vista SP1 - some by a fairly large margin. SP2 RC managed to offer much better performance under the PT Boats benchmark by up to almost 33% in the average FPS. And under Crysis Warhead the minimum frame rate was vastly improved, moving from four FPS in SP1 to ten FPS in SP2.....

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expect MORE perf boosts from RTM as they have smoothed the rough edges.

Sometimes the difference between a beta and an RTM is that they just tested it more to be sure it works. I did however install the RTM to my second rig and runned a few synthetic benchmarks. No difference between the RC2 and the RTM. I will also test it in games to be certain.

HellasVagabond: the links you provided at the start of the thread were for the RC1 and not the RTM, and regardless they no longer work. since people are incapable of reading the other comments to find this out can you please edit the links out of your post?

There were links to torrents/other websites with the final. when will people LEARN TO READ.

the links above(orignaly posted by darknova) have downloads for the RTM build of sp2, expect it to be a while yet b4 they make ms's download pages, weeks or more if past experiance with ms service packs are any indication.

Sometimes the difference between a beta and an RTM is that they just tested it more to be sure it works. I did however install the RTM to my second rig and runned a few synthetic benchmarks. No difference between the RC2 and the RTM. I will also test it in games to be certain.

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"tested it more to make sure it works"???? LOL. Nobody wants a RC when there are RTM versions around. Its just wasting peoples time and bandwidth. Please remove your links.